Prosvyet: A Different Kind of Forever
by NDV
Summary: Set after Ned and Alexis' argument in late March...


Hello, everyone! This is the first General Hospital fanfiction I've ever *completed* (granted I only have two others going)...And the first story I've completed (aside from Project Clairsentience, a Pretender fanfiction) in over two years, when I quit writing for JAG. (If you watch either, you may know me as Liza or NDV...)  
  
This was conceived on a whim, as I thought of the words someone once said to me. This has a little bit of plot, a little bit of fluff, and all of the necessary bits for a short (very short, might I add) story. Call it a mood piece, or a story, or .... It's placed sometime after Ned and Alexis' argument in late March, 2001. The only characters included are Chloe, Ned, and Alexis... No Zander, Emily, et cetera... The song bits at beginning and end are excerpts from Sarah McLachlan's Mirrorball CD. I have no claim to the characters or songs, just the words that melded it all together...  
  
And feedback would be wonderful! Either hit Reply or send it to Lizaausten@tri-countynet.net or malenka@malenkaya.com... and I'll love you 'til the end of time :-)  
  
Now, onto this little story... (Keep in mind, my grammar/spelling may be bad, I had no beta reader, and it was written in under an hour...)  
  
  
Prosvyet: A Different Kind of Forever  
  
---I've crossed the last line  
From where I can't return...  
Where every step I took in faith  
Betrayed me...---  
  
  
"He refuses to understand..." Alexis began, pushing the remains of her salad around with a fork, "that I am an attorney. I've worked for years to be what I am, and I'm *good* at it. I can't just give it all up to be submissive...and...uh," she faltered, looking into the eyes of her dinner companion, "always there. It's not.. me. I'm Alexis Davis, attorney-at-law. Not, Alexis Davis-could've-been-Ashton, happy homemaker with time to burn."  
  
Her eyes seemed to deepen under Chloe's gaze, fading into the yesterdays she and Ned shared, and the tomorrows she believed they'd one day have. "Compromise?"   
  
The word barely passed her lips, before Alexis shook her head, staring at the wall behind Chloe, averting her eyes for fear her friend could read her thoughts as they played across her eyes.  
  
"I have, I have. I did everything, everything I could to compromise. I stayed when, uh, my career was at risk and when he got angry at me for moving into the penthouse. I compromised my ego and my reputation with the Eddie's Angel episode, and I played groupie for Eddie Maine. But when I have a big case, he can't... he can't understand it, can't stay. And yeah, Sonny's prone to trouble, danger even, but he saved my life. I know if it came to that, he'd do it again. Ned just... he wouldn't let me live my life. I can't... I can't blend myself into one entity. I need... I..."  
  
"Space?" Chloe supplied, watching as Alexis nodded her eyes. Briefly, the blond's eyes flickered to the person seated behind Alexis, facing the other direction but obviously listening to each word.   
  
"Perhaps," Alexis slowly stopped her nodding, looking up at Chloe in mid-thought, she pursed her lips, hesitating. "Listen to me," she chuckled nervously, "I sound like Stefan... another person I've given up in the struggle." Another pause, breathless, Chloe's eyes concerned, Alexis' saddening further.  
  
"Are Cassadines... Davises... allowed to be frightened?" Chloe asked, the corners of her mouth tilting up as she squeezed her friend's hand.  
  
"Not according to the others, but in this case, I'm making an exception." Alexis smiled back, bittersweet. Like everything left in her life.   
  
"I am quite frightened, you know, I ran... from Ned, and our... our wedding, but that's old news."  
  
"Still..." Chloe interrupted, "You're my friend, and you're hurting, and I feel like I need to do something. I tried pushing you and Ned together..." Alexis shook her head, as Chloe continued, "I think I only made things worse."  
  
Alexis forced a smile, "Closure, that's what we need now, I have the distinct feeling we have no room for anything else, at this point at least. Who knows? Months, years from now, we could be more in love than we were six months ago. I could make it to the alter *with Ned* and we could promise each other the world and eternity. But I can't do that now. I can't even promise myself that." Her words stopped just as abruptly as they began. Alexis' eyes finally flitted around the room, taking in the surroundings she'd nearly forgotten were there, before they landed back on Chloe's face. They danced mournfully across her friend, and drifted back to the hand that held the ring she wore around her neck.   
  
"I never had the closure I needed, deserved, with the more important people in my life. You know, Chloe, it's a pattern, the ones I love... I lose. If I didn't lose Ned at that alter... which I didn't completely, I had him back for a short while - probably post-traumatic-stress syndrome or something, you know, after, uh, the shooting," her words were nervous, jumbled, in the fashion Ned always found endearing, and Chloe found almost worrisome. "I lost my mother, my brother, my..." she chuckled, "I don't even know quite what to call him now, boyfriend is far too adolescent, and lover is too trivial, easy. And I suppose calling him my soulmate would be the worst thing I could do," again, Alexis switched gears, "Forever's a really long time. I think maybe that's what did it. In Las Vegas, you know, that was okay, I knew it was only a year, tops. Forever, though... And the whole commitment part - Ned has a history, he falls in and out of love and infatuations... I trust him with my life, and heart still, but sometimes when we were together, I would panic. What if I wasn't good enough? What if he couldn't love me like ... like Lois? What if I was just a substitute for something better? What if he found someone better? What if..."  
  
"Whatifs only get you into more trouble, Alexis. You're a lawyer, analytical and et cetera, you know that," Chloe smiled softly, again letting her gaze slip inconspicuously to the people behind her friend.   
  
"Yes, yes I do. But there's two parts of your brain: the side that knows what's right and wrong, and what's real and isn't; then there's the other half that is as frightened as a child in an electrical storm - afraid of love and abandonment - still suffering from the sins committed and the sins suffered of years before." Alexis' smile dropped and she looked at her friend with a bitter twist to her expression.   
  
Alexis Davis, attorney-at-law, the castaway-Cassadine, mob "mouthpiece" - she'd once hated that term, had given up.  
  
In love, and, Chloe felt a clawing at her heart, if the grey and pained face held any truth, in life.  
  
With a choked sob, Alexis' face fell, "I loved him, I hurt him, but I love him."  
  
The other woman stood from her seat, unsure, and reached across, holding her best friend in an embrace, thankful for Alexis' sake that the restaurant was quite empty, and dark. "He still loves you," Chloe whispered, dark eyes meeting her own, "It's not too late."  
  
With that, Chloe backed away from Alexis, a wistful expression on her face, as she watched Alexis sit back in her chair, carefully, almost wearily. Before exiting, she smiled at another familiar face, and tapped the patron she'd been glancing toward on the shoulder, nodding her head.  
  
Slowly, he turned his own chair, laying a hand on Alexis' heaving shoulder.  
  
"Forever's highly overrated," he whispered, and she turned a tear-stained face to the man that had conquered most of her demons, and dominated her dreams.   
  
"Ned," she acknowledged, leaning backward involuntarily, her head touching the side of his face. She seemed to gravitate toward his warmth. Anything to fill the void, the darkness that echoed around inside, like her cries in their half-empty bedroom.   
  
Moments later, Alexis whispered, tears wetting her dry lips, "It's too late for apologies, isn't it?"  
  
He didn't reply, only took a deep breath, and so Alexis, striving to fill the silence, continued. "It never stops hurting, Ned, when your heart's been broken too many times to heal, does it?" She didn't expect an answer. "I miss ..."  
  
"Us?" Ned supplied, whispering as well, not knowing why. The Alexis he was awkwardly sitting with was not one he understood, and one he certainly didn't like. Her words were so languid, morose, resigned.  
  
She smiled again, this time it wasn't forced, "Yes, us." The silence this time wasn't as nervous, as tense, and Alexis breathed in his scent, wishing the closure she sought was as easily obtained as the smell of his cologne.   
  
"I love you, Ned," she whispered, so quietly he wasn't certain it was real. She lifted her head from his shoulder, her body from his, and stood from her chair, lifting her hand to take his, a smooth smile crossing her face. The years and the sorrow seemed to drop away, but there was a finality in her movements that shook Ned more than her words had.   
  
"I know," he replied, standing, taking her hand in his own, clasping it tightly, "I never..."  
  
"I know, too." Alexis' reply was natural, almost distant, as her eyes bore into his. A chill ran involuntarily up and down Ned's spine, proceeding to his chest, and then gripped his entire being.  
  
She began to lead him towards the elevator, and with a slight resistance on his part, they stopped, and Alexis looked up at him with a need, not for love or forgiveness or even the understanding she originally needed, but for something akin to permission. For what, Ned refused to see, and he shook his head half-heartedly, the lump in his throat blocking the words he longed to say.  
  
Again, Alexis looked up into him, standing on tiptoe, brushing his lips with her own. The pathway of salty tears ending on his face now as they did hers, the room revolving on them, the music that no one else heard circled them, melancholy.   
  
She wouldn't ask again, and her lips fell from his, her one hand still entwined in his as the other fell from his chin. With a light tug, the couple entered the elevator, staring at each other, smiles and frowns meeting and becoming one on each face.  
  
The elevator binged and they exited, turning right to enter Alexis' old suite, which Ned always knew she'd kept, no words yet spoken, none quite fitting.  
  
The silence was eternal, and roared like no other.  
  
The key slipped into the lock and Alexis pushed open the door handle, looking at him, her eyes telling him she'd known he'd be there, that she'd known all along that things would be this way. The wisdom of a thousand years poured from her heart like a stream, and Ned's tears began to drip down his chin, allthewhile, he thought he'd never seen her so truthfully, so beautiful.   
  
Her words could have been a breeze had the windows been open, or the dripping of his tears had their not been carpeting on the floor, but they heard them, and carried them, and cherished them more than anything before.  
  
"I can't promise you 'forever'... but I can promise you 'for now'."  
  
---Companion to our demons   
They will dance and we will play...  
With chairs, candles, and clothes  
Making darkness in the day...--- 


End file.
